Today is the last day for the current HP, as it splits into two companies Nov. 1

HP, in its current incarnation, is only a few hours away from going away. The Palo Alto, California-based technology giant is about to split into two companies; the change itself will be made on Sunday, November 1.

When that happens, one of the companies will be called simply HP Inc. That will be the one that most consumers are used to dealing with, as they will continue to make PC hardware devices, along with printers. It will be led by Dion Weisler as its CEO. The other company will be called Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which will offer businesses server computers, software and other tech services. It will be led by Meg Whitman, who currently is CEO of HP for the next few hours.

Both companies will still be huge organizations. Each is expected to bring in $50 billion in revenue every year. Whitman told The New York Times that the time had come to break HP apart so that both parts could work better:

"We're leaving behind a company that was very large, running two businesses that were very different," Ms. Whitman said in an interview at her headquarters last week. "We're creating two new big companies, not bite-sized morsels, with real capabilities to change things."

One interesting thing about the split is that the original offices of the founders of HP, William Hewlett and David Packard, are being sealed off with a separate entrance so that employees of both HP Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise can visit them. The garage where the first version of HP got started is also considered to be jointly owned by both new companies.

Nope. Two entirely separate companies. HP in HP inc. doesn't stand for Hewlett-Packard anymore. We were told we are no longer allowed to refer to to HP as Hewlett-Packard come Monday. HP now stands for nothing.

HP builds Windows laptops...Windows users use HP printers. I don't see how this is "irreleventant news on Windows Central". It wouldn't be even on iMore. There will be 2 HP's. The article explains it and ellucidates the reader as to which of them is the HP they will be concerned about when looking at hardware vendors.

The Inc boys make some nice laptops these days so relevant. On our side we are the leaders in servers and I can guarantee you that there is very high chance that your files sitting on Azure/OneDrive etc will be on a ProLiant or custom build HP server.

Me too. What they did to WebOS was criminal (IMO). Out of principle, I will never own another HP device. (Update: As developers we were told continuously that they were injecting money into the platform and were going to keep it going. Many of us showed loyalty to the platform and continued to build apps, and support WebOS in the enterprise, only to find HP go back on their word and quickly shut down all services. My organization probably lost close to $30,000).

It's easier to sell or shut down a company than to split off a division.

That's why Google kept Motorola Mobility as a separate company and didn't incorporate it into Google. That's why Microsoft created Microsoft Mobile instead of putting the ex-Nokia D&S division inside the structure of Microsoft Corporation. By doing that, Google was able to easily and quickly sell Motorola Mobility to Lenovo and Microsoft was quickly able to writte off Microsoft Mobile (and sooner completely shut it down).

With this, if one of the HP's need to be sold or shut down, it'll be easier.

Yep, and this is likely to happen. Meg tried to sell the printer and PC business before the split, but nobody was interested. Now, as a smaller company, it's just a matter of time until HP Inc. will be gone and owned by someone else. An analyst put it that way: Meg kept all areas of growth and gave all headaches to Weisler.

Got my pass re-done on Friday. Hewlett Packard Enterprise it is for me on Monday. Makes total sense, there really was very little overlap or combined sales effort with HP Inc. All the best to them and we'll still have a shared office or two in the UK.

No. They outsourced many of the field techs to another company in May. My assumption is they did it to pay for Meg's bonus the board approved in January. It has not been a smooth transition either, for the outsourced that is. The ball was dropped on so many things.

They have such a fantastic culture of inclusiveness. In 2008 Mark Hurd sent an email to all staff informing them that everyone would be taking a 5% pay cut. It wasn't even legally enforceable in many countries, but why only drop morale in some places and not others?

You'll naturally get a variety of views and comments for such a large organisation. I'll have been at HP for 5 years by April and can only say I have enjoyed it all the way in my area of Technical Sales, Compute Strategy on Gobal/Strategic accounts in the UK. I worked with Compaq/HP for 13 years prior to that at a large channel partner and the UK HP stafff, particularly in my area of ISS/EG have always been great. I did see the downsides of Mark Hurd destroying the R&D budgets at the time (prior to my joining) and despite the markets loving him the engineers I dealt with were very down. That has changed under Meg, she has made tough decisions but R&D in Compute is in the right place and we have some amazing stuff being announced next month at Discover London (I should be there if anyone going :-) ). As a customer focused resource I've generally seen positive or unconcerned views about the split as 99% of interactions and sales motions have always been separate between what is now Inc and Enterprise. So thumbs up from me and a shout out to those in HP who helped my through the most painful time of my life this summer when my wife passed unexpectedly, they couldn't have done anything more to ensure work was not causing addiitonal stress.

I worked for HP from Aug 2000 to Nov 2011 when the wfr bug hit my area. I still have a lot of former colleagues working for HP here that will be transitioning to HP Enterprise come Monday. Although I got laid off, I still pull for the employees because I spent a lot of great years there and met a lot of good people. Good luck HP Inc, and HP Enterprise.